Saturday, December 29, 2012

Rewriting: act and sequence bridges

I don’t know what
it is, but my family’s Christmas gatherings always seem toinvolve aliens in some way. Possibly stems from all those years we spent road-tripping on (the former) Route 66.

This year it was watching CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (again).

I haven’t seen the
film in a while and it turns out to be a great example of a concept I’m always
trying to get across to this college film class I’m teaching: act and sequence
transitions. To get across the idea of the Three-Act, Eight Sequence structure, I show them films to illustrate that accomplished filmmakers often use a recurring
image or device to indicate the end of one sequence and the beginning of
another (not always for every sequence, but VERY frequently for the transitions
between the four acts).

Some are very
obvious, like:

- The still shots
of wedding invitations that set up each act of FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL

- The six stages of
a con that set up the sequences of THE STING: The Set-Up, The Hook, The Take, The Wire, The Shut-Out and The Sting... and which are delineated by still
paintings on title cards.(Yes,
that’s just six – the first sequence is the incident that compels Hooker to
want to do the long con to begin with, and the eighth is the wrap-up.)

-
The old newsreel-style shots of the map of the globe with the superimposed
plane flying and the red line marking the journey and the sequence transitions
in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK.

Others
are more subtle but easy to spot if you train yourself to look, like:

-
The long overhead shots of Jamie Foxx’s cab cruising through the streets of L.A. between each sequence of COLLATERAL. (There are similar long shots of the
spaceship Nostromo gliding silently through the vast emptiness of space that
mark the sequence breaks in the first ALIEN)

-

-
The shots of seasons (fall, winter, spring) and specific holiday decorations in
the Great Hall that delineate the sequences and acts in HARRY POTTER AND THE
SORCERER’S STONE.

- Another film I just love, THE PRINCESS BRIDE, cuts away from the main story of Westley and Buttercup to the framing story of the grandfather reading the book to his grandson at each sequence and act break - slyly demonstrating the power of cliffhangers.

- And
in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, after the climax of each sequence, there is a cut to a
short scene of the team of scientists, led by a mouth-watering François Truffaut (just saying) racing to yet another spot on
the globe to investigate another UFO sighting.These scenes appear every fifteen minutes like clockwork –
not as blatant as still shots and title cards, but equally effective as the
demarcation between sequences and acts.

Personally,
I just love how these bridges, or markers, or transitions, or whatever you feel like
calling them, create a symmetry and forward momentum to a story. It signals an
audience that the story is moving into a different phase, and gives the
audience a chance to take a breath and mentally prepare, even for a second, for
the next stage of the journey.

I’m
bringing this up today because we’re talking about rewriting tricks and techniques,
and I think it’s really useful to train yourself to look for how your favorite
storytellers might be using these transitions, on screen and on the page. It
will get you thinking about how you might use some kind of bridge scene
yourself. It’s not that you HAVE to do it, not at all!But maybe there’s a hint of some
perfect recurring transition scene already in your first draft that you can
build on to create a whole series of transitions that will give your story that
perfect symmetry and momentum.

Something
to think about!

So
do you have any examples for me?

And
Happy New Year to everyone!May
all your writing dreams come true this year.

If you're a romance writer, or have a strong love plot or subplot in your novel or script, then Writing Love: Screenwriting Tricks II is an expanded version of the first workbook with a special emphasis on love stories.

4 comments:

Hi AlexAs always, thanks for the Post.I wrote a short story over the last month or so, for a contest. It's only 3000 words.The story refers to golf, and it's a romance. Having just read this post of yours, I realize about 3 times in the story, I 'bridge' back to mention/discussion of this particular set of golf clubs, as a break between segments that (hopefully) build the romance between characters. I wonder if what you describe as scene bridges, hold true way down to short stories too?Thanks.Lily M.

Hey Lily - absolutely, that sounds like a classic curtain or bridge that you worked into your story, and I think that it's maybe even more important in short stories to do this kind of thing to create a solid structure. Well done, you!!